


Kinda young, kinda now. Kinda free, kinda wow

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [27]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Darcy Lewis Needs a Hug, F/M, Family Angst, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22288165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.April 1974: Shopping
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers
Series: The Long Way Around [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1402126
Comments: 66
Kudos: 197





	Kinda young, kinda now. Kinda free, kinda wow

**Author's Note:**

> So hey, this is going to get angsty. Why? Because I'm feeling angsty and this is the time of year I get *extra* angsty because this is the time of year when I lost my mom. And I deal with my always-shifting, never-quite-going-away grief by making Darcy experience it for me. So apologies if this isn't the fluffy bag of sugar the last few fics have been, but ya girl's got a bruised heart that hurts just a little extra this time of year.

Tangie didn’t look particularly thrilled with the dresses in front of her. Darcy watched her expression twist in consideration as her dark eyes moved from one to the other without any spark that might indicate a decision. She didn’t blame her, of course. The dresses Tangie had to choose from were all hideous in their own way, but Darcy couldn’t tell her that. Tangie had no way of knowing that one day, bridal gowns wouldn’t all come with belled sleeves or built-in elbow-length capes or be paired with wide-brimmed straw hats.

Tangie caught her eye in the mirror and turned around. “I don’t know, Darcy,” she sighed as her arms dropped. “What do you think?”

Rising slightly from where she’d been lounging with Tangie’s two younger sisters and letting Camille braid her hair, Darcy shrugged. “I think you should get one with a nice, high waist so that you can actually breathe and eat the food at your reception.”

It was the same advice she’d given to her sister the last time she’d been trapped in a bridal shop. And the same advice she’d planned on taking herself in the event she ever had to make such a decision—not that she could have ever thought her options might be quite so…groovy.

“Do _not_ ,” Tangie’s mother, Robin, exclaimed from where she’d been admiring a display of hats. “If you wear a high-waisted dress, everyone is going to think you’re pregnant.”

Which was, if Darcy remembered correctly, the exact same thing her own mother had said the last time she’d made that suggestion. Lizzie had agreed and had squeezed herself into a figure-hugging sparkling affair with a skirt that flared out at the knee. She’d looked amazing, Darcy recalled. But she hadn’t eaten more than a few bites of her dinner and only the bite of cake her husband had fed her before she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah, but she’s _not_ pregnant,” Ronnie, the middle Archibald sister chimed in. “So, who cares what people think?”

“You don’t want people whispering,” Robin said firmly. “Darren’s mother already doesn’t like you.”

Tangie scoffed. “His mother likes me just fine!”

Robin looked skeptical. “She’s gotta funny way of showing it.”

The bride-to-be rolled her eyes. “You’re just saying that because _you_ don’t like _Darren_ and you want me to think it’s even on both sides.”

Darcy bit back a smile at the look exchanged between Ronnie and Camille while Robin blustered indignantly. “That’s not true,” she insisted. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“A truly ringing endorsement for your future son-in-law,” Tangie quipped.

“I just think you could find someone with a little more…” Robin moved her shoulders in an innocent shrug. “Ambition, maybe. Someone who could support you more so you wouldn’t have to work so much.”

“I _like_ working, Mama,” Tangie said, sounding like this was an argument that had already gone a few rounds. “I don’t need him to make enough money for both of us,” she added. “I like that we both work—it makes us equals.”

Robin held up both hands. “This is not the place for another women’s lib rally,” she said tiredly. “Please just pick a dress so I can decide on a pattern for your bridesmaids’ dresses.”

“But Mama,” Ronnie piped up. “If she doesn’t _like_ any of these dresses, then you can’t just make her pick one.”

Darcy shot her friend an encouraging smile in the mirror. “You’ve still got plenty of time, Tange.”

“The wedding is three months away,” Robin reminded, sounding dangerously close to exasperation. “You can’t keep putting this off or you’re going to end up walking down the aisle in your blue jeans!”

Camille grinned. “ _I_ wanna get married in blue jeans.”

“What if we _all_ wear blue jeans?” Ronnie added with a giggle.

Robin pointed in her younger daughters’ direction. “Don’t give her any ideas.” She looked back at Tangie and pursed her lips. “You’re really not liking any of these?”

Tangie shrugged. “Not really?”

Her mother sighed. “Well I’m not going to force you into a dress you don’t want,” she relented. “But honey, you really need to pick something soon.”

“I know,” Tangie agreed before she ran her hands over her face. “But maybe we can go looking again on Saturday? When I’m not so tired from work?”

Robin’s eyebrows lifted. “I thought you _liked_ working?”

Tangie’s face was an exact mirror of her mother’s as she turned to face her. “I thought this wasn’t the place for a women’s lib rally?”

Robin turned away, shaking her head as she muttered under her breath. “Lord, you are testing me today…”

Darcy hung back to wait for her friend while the younger girls were herded into the car and driven away by their mother. Tangie sighed heavily as they made their way out of the bridal shop and into the unseasonably dry April night. Darcy linked their arms as they started walking toward Tangie’s car at the end of the block. “What’s wrong, bride-to-be?”

Tangie’s lips pouted again. “I thought planning a wedding was supposed to be _fun,_ ” she grumbled.

Darcy laughed. “Who told you that?”

A pause. “I don’t know,” Tangie admitted. “Who told _you_?”

“No one,” Darcy laughed again. “Because it’s not fun. It’s stressful. I hate weddings.”

Tangie looked over, a line creased between her eyebrows. “Then how come you agreed to be in mine?”

She smiled. “Because you’re my best friend,” she shrugged. “And I love you.” When Darren had proposed to Tangie on New Year’s Eve, Darcy had agreed without hesitation when asked to be a bridesmaid, knowing that her love for Tangie would far outweigh whatever hideous dress she was made to wear and any number of decorations she would have to help make by hand. “Anyway,” she continued. “I probably wouldn’t have such a strong opinion either way if my sister hadn’t made my life a living hell when I was her maid of honor.”

“How so?”

“She was engaged for eleven months and she made me do something wedding-related every _single_ week of those eleven months,” Darcy remembered with a grimace. “I tasted _so_ much cake, and wine, and salmon and roast beef and nineteen different kinds of mustard and looked at more stupid, engravable wedding favors than should even be _legal_ and by the time she actually walked down the aisle I was ready to trip her.”

Tangie snorted and shook her head. She giggled for a moment before she grew serious and looked over at Darcy again. “Y’know, I think that’s the first time you ever told me anything about your sister.”

She felt her face flush as she opened and closed her mouth, unsure of what to say. It was true, she realized. She usually tried so hard not to mention any specifics about her family or anything about where or when she’d grown up. It was too hard to try and remember all the things that she was supposed to have experienced if she really belonged in 1974—it was so much easier to just avoid the topic than shine on another layer of lies to her backstory. “I…uh…” A hundred different ends to that sentence rose and died in the back of her throat.

But Tangie didn’t seem to need a response. She just offered a smile that walked a fine line between sadness and sympathy. “Long story?”

Darcy breathed out a grateful smile and nodded. “The longest.”

Tangie nodded with understanding. “I hope you’ll let me hear it someday,” she said after a moment.

She smiled again. “Someday,” she said, wondering if that were true. If she’d ever be able to tell anyone other than Janet the truth. If Tangie would even believe her—if _anyone_ would ever believe her—or if her friendships from now on would always hiccough right there. Right before she could ever really be herself. She untangled their arms as they reached the car. “Hey,” she cleared her throat. “I’ve gotta, um,” she motioned further down the street. “I’ve gotta stop at the drug store before I head home.”

“Okay,” Tangie shrugged. “No problem.”

“No,” she shook her head, wishing she’d said something else. “I mean, don’t worry about driving me. I think I could use the walk.”

To her relief, this did not merit an argument beyond a long side-eye and a small shrug. “Okay,” Tangie said as she pulled her keys from her purse. “Just be careful; I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Darcy smiled. “Bright-eyed and bushy tailed.”

She actually _did_ need to go to the drug store. She’d used the last of the toothpaste that morning and had been making mental notes to remember to buy more all day. Long’s was closest while still being on the way home and the bright lights and vague smell of antiseptic reminded her just a little too much of the hospital when she pulled open the door and stepped inside.

The toothpaste was in the same aisle as always, but she noticed that they’d rearranged some of the other departments. She had to walk through the cosmetics to get to the register where a short line had already formed. Darcy did her best not to sigh at this mild inconvenience and let her attention wander to the little stack of white cardstock next to a sign that said _New Fragrance by Revlon! Try it today!_

Idly, she picked a card from the top and touched it to the tip of her nose.

Her vision blurred unexpectedly as her breath was swept from her lungs. Nothing—not the years she’d spent looking, the hundreds of times she’d desperately scraped every corner of her memory trying to find the right name or bottle, or the dozens of scents she had sprayed on herself—nothing would have prepared her for actually finding the perfume she’d been looking for.

Because the moment the citrusy, floral scent hit her, she wasn’t in the drugstore anymore. She was seven years old and it was all she could smell as her mother leaned over to tuck her in and her dark curls brushed her face. And it was the scent that calmed her down every time she was wrapped in a hug and cried out her rollercoaster of teenaged feelings. And the smell that clung to the clothes in the closet that she was allowed to flip through when she needed a black dress for her grandmother’s funeral.

“Mommy?” The word she hadn’t said since she was ten slipped past her lips before she stop it and the tears crashed down her cheeks. Darcy put a hand to her mouth to muffle the sob that burned without warning at the back of her throat. She didn’t remember dropping the tube of toothpaste. Or grabbing a handful of the sample cards before she bolted from the store so fast, they probably thought she stole something.

She barely remembered getting home but before she knew it, she was climbing the last of the stairs and falling into the apartment. She knew Steve looked up from his gradebook as she tore past him.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

But she didn’t have time to watch his face twist in confusion or concern before she made it to the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She couldn’t stop crying. She’d been trying to stop, trying to catch her breath, since she’d left the store but every time she thought she was under control, another wave would breach in her chest and she would have to choke out another sob as another round of fat, unrelenting tears streaked down her face.

Everything she’d been pushing back and telling herself she didn’t miss had rushed to the surface all at once. All the times in the last four years that she’d wished she could call her mother, all the things she wanted to say to her, every stupid, meaningless girly thing she’d wanted to share with her all rose at the same time in her throat. All the things she’d never get to do—ask for an opinion on a wedding dress, hide out for a few hours when she and Steve had a fight, ask her ten million questions about how to be a mom, steal her shakshuka recipe—sat like a hot, heavy weight pressing down on her chest. Choking her until the weight of everything she had been missing made it so she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t do anything until she made it to the toilet and retched up everything that couldn’t be cried out.

“Darcy?” Steve’s voice was soft and full of concern from just outside the door.

She gagged again, unable to stop herself before she coughed and swiped at her lips with the back of her hand. “I’m fine,” she croaked automatically as she reached to flush away her sick. She walked on her knees over to the sink and ran the water; she pushed a few handfuls of cold water into her mouth and swished before spitting it out.

The doorknob turned and the door opened slowly before Steve stepped inside, nodding with understanding. “And I’m a Republican,” he said conversationally as he sat down on the floor beside her. He reached into the cabinet beneath the sink and handed her a thick, folded towel. She didn’t know what he expected her to do with it, but she placed it on his lap and curled herself up to lay her head against it, still trying to catch her breath. “So, we’re both liars,” he added as his fingers went into her hair, gently combing through her curls.

She sniffled and nodded. “Yeah,” she said softly. “We are.”

They were quiet for what felt like a long time, listening to the drip of the faucet and the sound of Darcy’s breathing as it slowly returned to normal and her heart stopped pounding in her ears. Steve was still petting her hair when he tried again. “Bridesmaid’s dress that ugly, huh?”

She let out a wet laugh and reached up to lace her fingers with his. “I found the perfume I’ve been looking for,” she said, her voice hoarse and weak. Steve’s fingers tightened around hers. “The one my mom wore.”

“Okay,” he said, just slow enough that she knew he was waiting for her to go on. That she’d hadn’t given him quite enough to make him stop worrying.

Without getting up, she slid her purse over and pulled out the stack of cards to hand him one. She didn’t test herself to inhale deeply again. Steve took it cautiously and held it up for inspection. She heard him run his thumb over the name of the perfume that Revlon had embossed into its sample cards.

“Charlie?”

At the sound of the name, another wave of tears rose, and her vision swam. “Yeah,” she squeaked, feeling her face crumple again. “It’s…” she took a deep breath in, willing herself not to start again. With some difficulty, she sat up and turned to face Steve. “It’s just…” There was another sob rising in her throat, uncaring about how much she’d already cried, how desperately she wanted to stop. “It’s so _cheap_ ,” she managed before she dissolved into tears again.

“What?” Steve asked, his hand came up to pull hers down from her eyes. “What do you mean?”

She sniffled and felt the strangest urge to laugh bubble up from somewhere beneath her sobs. “It’s this cheap, drugstore perfume for teenagers and she—” she choked up a smile. “She wore it for the rest of her life and it’s _two dollars_ a bottle and I just miss her so much—” her breath caught in her chest again. “And my stupid sister,” she blurted out naming the other aches in her heart that she’d been ignoring, “who is so perfect that you can’t even hate her for it and my dad and his eleven recycling bins,” she went on, tears streaming down her face again, not sure if she was even making sense anymore. “It’s all _so_ far away and it all smells like two-dollar perfume that they sell to ninth graders…” She laughed again, thinking of all the time she’d spent searching high end perfume counters, all the expensive things her mother had always liked and made sure she could afford to buy herself. While all the while splashing on the same cheap fragrance she’d been wearing since she was nineteen…

She couldn’t stop laughing any more than she’d been able to stop crying before and by the time Steve gathered her in his arms, she wasn’t sure which she was doing anymore. He carried her from the bathroom and back into the living room to sit them both on the couch. She draped her legs across his lap and let him keep his arms around her while she dropped her head onto his chest and breathed in the warm, familiar smell of his t-shirt.

It felt like a long time before she felt calm enough to speak without worrying about another breakdown catching her off guard. “You know how much I love you,” she said quietly, hoping he wouldn’t stop the slow, soothing circles he’d been rubbing into her back. “Right?” She untucked her head from beneath his chin to look at him. “Because I love you more than anything in the world.”

Steve looked confused as he offered her a small smile. “Is there something I’m doing that makes you think I don’t know that?”

She shook her head and self-consciously wet her lips before pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. “No, it’s just...” She felt like an idiot, she realized. Like a baby, literally crying for her mommy; so much a mess that Steve didn’t even think she could get up off the bathroom floor. “This was a big, scary, messy, unexpected reaction and I don’t…” she stopped and closed her eyes before she rubbed at them. “I don’t want you to think that I—that it meant anything…” She let herself trail off, uncertain of what she meant, what she was trying to say. Her head was hurting and she felt wrung out, hungover from everything that had just poured out.

He pulled one hand from beneath her shirt and held it to her cheek. “Of course it means something,” he let his thumb drift over her cheekbone. “It means you miss your family. Your parents and your sister and the rest of the life you had to give up—”

“But I don’t want you to think that I regret it or…” she cut him off before she looked down, embarrassed again by how quickly she’d gone from fine to out of control. “Or that I wouldn’t do it again. I didn’t mean to scare you, I…don’t know what’s wrong with me—”

“Nothing’s wrong with you, sweetheart,” he shook his head. “I’m not worried that you changed your mind or think that you regret anything.” His eyes flicked from her to the bathroom and back again. “And it takes more than that to scare me.”

She felt the corner of her lips twitch into a half-smile. “Well you _looked_ a little freaked out.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I thought you were hurt, or sick,” he smiled gently. “Not because I thought you were an emotional train wreck.” His eyes dropped again, and he shifted their position to reach down and scoop up Scrabble, who squeaked plaintively until he was deposited in Darcy’s lap. “Scrabs on the other hand,” Steve scratched the kitten’s orange striped head. “He was very concerned.”

Darcy dropped her head to kiss the cat, listening to his gentle purr for a moment before she looked up again. “I mean it though, Steve,” she said softly. “I know I just had a first-class meltdown, and I _do_ miss everything and everyone from before, but I wouldn’t—” she cut herself off with a shake of her head. “I’d still choose you. If it came down to a choice, I mean. I’d pick the life with you in it over the life without you.”

He took her face in his hand again and pulled her in for a kiss. “I know,” he said softly, before their lips met again. “I’d choose you too.”

***

She didn’t hear him leave after she fell asleep on the couch, nor did she remember him bringing her to bed, but he must have done both because it was morning when she awoke, tangled in their sheets and with a headache that felt _exactly_ like a hangover. She could tell he’d left for work already by the quiet of the apartment and because it was already six-thirty and he was usually long gone by then.

She still felt terrible as she kicked off the blankets and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Too terrible to think about going in to work. She swung her legs out of bed and did her best not to trip over Scrabble as he rubbed his head against her ankles on her way to the phone.

Something caught her eye on the way through the living room and she stopped, tilting her head in confusion at the evidence that Steve had indeed left for at least a little while after she’d fallen asleep. Momentarily forgetting about calling her boss, Darcy crossed the room and plucked the note Steve had pinned to a new, large throw pillow. It looked like someone had wrapped a sleeveless red cable knit sweater around a pillow and sewn up the ends and sides. She looked at the note.

_In case you need a reminder,_ it read, and she frowned for a moment before she realized there was a box beside the pillow. A blue box with large white letters printed with a flourish in the center. She opened it and pulled out the bottle of perfume, steeling herself for a moment before she spritzed it onto the pillow and wrapped her arms around it, breathing deep.

If she closed her eyes, it was almost like getting to hug her mother again; and for the first time in four years, she didn’t feel quite so far away.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you're wondering, the title for this fic came from the AMAZING Revlon jingle that is just so 1973 it almost HURTS:  
> "There's a fragrance that's here today, and they call it — Charlie!  
> A different fragrance that thinks your way, and they call it – Charlie!  
> Kinda young, kinda now, Charlie!  
> Kinda free, kinda wow! Charlie!  
> The kind of fragrance that's gonna stay, and it's here now — Charlie!"
> 
> Oh man. So good. Anyway, I'm not hating on Charlie as *I* wore it all through middle and high school and so did like, half the girls I went to school with. If it wasn't Charlie, it was CK1. 
> 
> And beyond all that, I love you all endlessly. Just so you know.


End file.
